


Counterproductive

by TheGreatLibraryFangirl (Mazeem)



Series: Gaps in Canon [7]
Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Christopher Wolfe is Not Okay, Comfort, During Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Food Issues, M/M, Making Out, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24145348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazeem/pseuds/TheGreatLibraryFangirl
Summary: Set during Ash and Quill, in the Brightwell's northern stronghold, Castle Raby.Wolfe is helping Thomas to build the printing press. Santi thinks this is a bad idea.Wolfe disagrees. He needs to keep busy.He's fine.
Relationships: Niccolo Santi/Christopher Wolfe
Series: Gaps in Canon [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1318670
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8
Collections: Volume Two - May Event for The Great Library





	Counterproductive

**Author's Note:**

> _'The press was pure tragedy for Wolfe; it was the physical expression of an idea that had destroyed his life and sentenced him to unimaginable pain. The symbol of all his hopes and dreams, and all his despair, too. And now Jess could hear the echoes of it in his voice.'_
> 
> _'"Screiber," Wolfe said. He stood in the doorway, looking at them in a distant kind of way that Jess found unsettling. [...] "I was thinking I might help you. [...] I need something to do," he said. "You understand. Rooms grow small. Silence gets heavy."'_  
>  Me: *looks between those two Ash and Quill quotes, frowns, writes this*

Wolfe stepped back from the press and regarded it critically. He walked back over to the huge diagram Thomas had provided him with and carefully went through everything, step by step. 

It looked complete. It looked … beautiful. 

With all the resources Callum Brightwell had provided and several previous presses behind him … Thomas’ press was a work of art. 

“Schreiber?” he said, loudly enough to catch Thomas’ attention from where the boy was bending thin strips of copper. This new weapon was nowhere near finished yet. 

Thomas looked up, blinking to bring his focus away from the work in front of him. There was grey metal dust painted in lines on his forehead where he’d been frowning, giving Wolfe the strange sensation of seeing where Thomas might wrinkle as he grew older.

If circumstances permitted him to grow older, of course.

“Yes, Scholar?”

“It’s ready to test.” Wolfe had already inserted the paper and loaded in some type. He tilted his head towards Thomas.

Thomas beamed. “Already?” He put down his pliers and walked over to the press. No need for him to refer to the diagram. He’d already spoken about how he could visualise objects.

Wolfe watched Thomas double-check everything. A tight knot formed in his stomach, which was ridiculous. If there was a problem, they would fix it. It had been a long time since his work had been inspected, that was all.

“I agree. It’s ready.” Thomas absentmindedly dusted his hands on his trousers as he stepped away, smearing the grease and ink onto the rough material. He nodded to Wolfe. “Whenever you like, Scholar.”

Wolfe raised his eyebrows. “Won’t you do it? It’s your press.”

Thomas shrugged. “You have done most of the building on this. You should test it.”

Wolfe heard the implicit, _This is your press_ , in that statement, and strove to keep his expression calm as the walls momentarily closed in on him.

His original press shimmered into life over what he’d built over the past two days, just for a moment, until he shook his imagination loose. 

Laughable. As he’d said before, his press had been crude. More of a proof of concept than even a prototype.

But it had been his, and he’d had such hopes. 

“Very well,” he said, before his line of thought could get any more maudlin, and stepped forwards to flick the switch for the boiler. 

Pressure built fine, there. No leakages. At the sound of the whine, Wolfe flicked the first true switch, the one that controlled the mechanics. He watched intently as the roller inked his words.

 _His words_. That echoed oddly inside his head, and he tried to shut it out. He had important things to do. 

Next, a lever to pull the roll of paper into position above the metal type. He took his time checking the positioning. Everything was perfectly aligned. 

One last switch, for now. He flicked it, and the paper was pressed against the metal and then lifted. 

There was a further switch, to finish the process and ready it to begin again, but Wolfe wanted to do this last step with his own hands, as stupid and sentimental as that was. He cut the inked paper free from the roll and turned it over.

The first few lines from a lost work of Aristotle, salvaged from the Black Archives. Perfectly printed.

“Well,” he said softly, and then couldn’t say anything else.

The pride of a job well-done, yes, but there was something running fast and dark and deep underneath it too. 

“Good!” Thomas said, brisk and content, and Wolfe was alarmed by a rush of fury that grabbed him by the throat and shook him. 

_How dare you be so blase?_ it roared. _How dare you not appreciate the awe-inspiring power of this machine? Don’t you know what it will do?_

It was very hot in this makeshift workshop and the air itself felt suddenly thick in his lungs. He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth to stop himself from panting. 

Of course Thomas knows, he told himself, once the worst of the maelstrom had swept past. Thomas knows just as well as you what this means. He’s already _had_ this moment. Maybe as far back as Ptolemy House, maybe a few weeks ago in Philadelphia. 

It’s not his fault that you never got to see yours actually _work_. 

He fought the urge to swing the doors wide open, or to shout any of this ridiculous inner monologue at the poor boy, and instead rolled his sleeves up and took a couple of deep breaths until the sensation that he was bursting out of his skin lessened. 

When he looked over at Thomas, he was ashamed to see Thomas looking back at him with understanding in his eyes. 

“I’m sorry, Scholar,” Thomas said, taking an uncertain step towards Wolfe. “I should have considered this might be difficult.”

Sour pride slashed through the lump in Wolfe’s throat and freed his voice. “Really, Schreiber? Does this require your ‘consideration’? Did I not _offer_ to help?”

“You did.” Thomas looked awkward. "I am very grateful. You sped everything up considerably." No, more than awkward; he looked small, despite all the physical evidence to the contrary. His shoulders hunched and his hands clasped together. 

Wolfe cursed himself for being the cause of that reaction. Thomas had been standing tall and proud, before, looking at the creations with satisfaction.

“Well,” he said, again, much more forcefully, and turned to vigorously sweep his workspace clear of its detritus. 

Silence fell, and it was so tense that he fought to keep his shoulders from rising around his ears. Thomas was standing behind him, That didn’t help. 

“You’re much tidier than Jess,” Thomas said eventually. 

Wolfe winced. He couldn’t ignore that peace offering. 

“At least you didn’t say Dario,” he muttered. Thomas laughed too loudly. “Do you need any assistance with the Ray?”

It was his own version of a peace offering, and Thomas seized it with far more grace than Wolfe was capable of. 

“Yes, please, Scholar! It would save time if you would start constructing the outer parts.” He grabbed a roll of paper. 

Wolfe’s heart hurt as he looked at the neat diagram. For Thomas to feel compelled to make this, when he was uncomfortable even saying the names that made up a gun. 

Wolfe, as the partner to a soldier, as a veteran Research Scholar, would make the barrel, the stock, the sight, the trigger. All the rest.

Leave Thomas to work on the bits that didn’t look like a weapon.

Didn’t look like our commonly accepted schema of a weapon _yet_ , he corrected himself with a sick roll of his stomach. Thomas was revolutionising that, too. 

The new set of tasks quieted his thoughts to a calm analytical patter, so that he nearly leapt out of his skin when a knock came on the workshop door some time later.

“Come in!” Thomas called immediately, while Wolfe was still identifying the familiar pattern of sound. 

Not Jess’ knock. _Nic’s._

Wolfe’s hands froze mid-action. The door opened and Nic came into the workshop. 

_No_.

He desperately needed to cover up the completed printing press. Nic couldn’t see it. Nic couldn’t know. It wasn’t safe for Nic to know _anything_ about it. 

“Wait outside,” he snapped. 

NIc made a disgruntled little sound, but he retreated back out of the doorway. Wolfe thanked all the gods that he was typically irritable when interrupted, so that Nic didn’t think anything of it. He threw a cover over the press, and pretended not to see Thomas raising his eyebrows. 

“It’s time for dinner,” Nic called. 

“Not hungry,” Wolfe shot back. 

“Irrelevant point.” Nic’s tone was fond. This was a familiar exchange. 

Wolfe wasn’t soothed by it, though. There were so many alarms sounding in his mind that he felt deafened and insensible with their clamour. 

If he went with Nic, Nic would walk away from the workshop. Good. That was good. 

“Fine.” He got to his feet. Thomas was already on his feet and asking about the menu. 

Every step away from the workshop eased a little of the icy tension that had lashed itself around Wolfe’s chest. By the time they had re-entered the main building, it was almost a relief to have Nic striding next to him again. 

“Busy day?” Nic asked casually. Wolfe nodded. Nic didn’t push for more. 

Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t hungry, though the food was as high-quality as ever. 

Partly it just wasn’t to his taste. It was all very English. Today was lamb chops with rosemary potatoes and asparagus. 

Partly, though, it was his stomach that refused to settle and his throat which refused to loosen. 

Nic leaned over and stuck a fork in one of his neglected potatoes. “Can’t let that go to waste,” he said chidingly, even as his hand landed gently on Wolfe’s knee under the table. 

“I hate rosemary,” Wolfe muttered in response, loudly enough to be heard, even as he gratefully squeezed Nic’s hand back. 

“You two aren’t allowed to start fighting over meals as well. I forbid it,” Glain, who sat opposite Nic, said firmly. 

Everyone looked at Khalila and Dario, who had ‘enlivened’ several dinners so far with fights about Khalila’s food intake, or distinct lack thereof. Dario looked embarrassed and yet vindicated, while Khalila scowled and jabbed her fork into her untouched vegetarian meal with frankly frightening intent. Still, it was good to see any spark of life in her at all. 

Wolfe’s throat relaxed a little as he looked at the children. The situation might be very far from ideal, but at least they were all together; injuries healing and weight increasing again. 

Apart from Khalila, that was, and Jess, who had spent the days picking at his food much more convincingly than Khalila. Something was most certainly ticking away inside the boy’s mind. Wolfe idly chomped on the lamb on his fork as he pondered. 

He rose before the dessert and Nic rose with him. 

“We need to keep an eye on Jess - he’s not eating,” he said in a low voice as they walked to their room. 

“Chris. You ate four bites of lamb tonight.”

Wolfe made an irritated sound. “It was too rich. Keep an eye on me, too, then.”

“I try.” Nic sighed. 

Their room seemed small. Wolfe rolled his eyes at himself. 

“Leave that,” he snapped at Nic, who was on the way to the window. Nic shot him a look over his shoulder. 

“I’m hot. I’m opening it.” He did so and shrugged off first the jacket then the shirt he was wearing. There were indeed sweat marks marring his thin undershirt. 

Wolfe didn’t like seeing Nic in those clothes, anyway. Those weren’t Nic’s. All their clothes bar underwear had been removed for laundering, apparently, and hadn’t yet been returned. If they would be, at all, and hadn’t just been thrown out. Or burned. 

These well-stocked wardrobes were just another symptom of this distastefully luxurious cage. 

He gave his head a little shake, as if he could physically shift himself back into alignment. “How’s your arm?”

“Fine.” Nic stretched it out obligingly and Wolfe approached to examine the burn scar on his forearm. 

It was healing very nicely indeed, much more quickly than he’d ever seen a Greek Fire burn of that severity heal before. Thank you, Morgan, he thought, and tried to dismiss the memory of fields of destroyed crops. 

The skin still looked strange and damaged, but it was head and shoulders above where it had been in that tiny room that stank of infection and burnt flesh. 

Wolfe shook his head yet again - he’d make himself dizzy soon if he wasn’t careful - and moved in to kiss Nic. 

His skin itched with this stupid, misplaced sense of danger. Nic was fine. Nic was healthy. Nic was … well, no less safe than any of them were. 

Still, he kept up the kiss for longer than he would usually without further intentions, pulling Nic close and cupping the back of his neck. 

Nic drew away first, but only a fraction. “Is this your apology for disappearing for the best part of three days?” 

“I didn’t disappear.” It felt very important to point that out. “I’ve slept here, haven’t I?”

“You have.” Nic moved backwards a little more. There was a serious expression on his face that made Wolfe’s chest tighten. “Are you certain that working with the press is the right thing to do, Chris?” He reached out and gently stroked a stray strand of Wolfe’s hair back from his face. 

Wolfe flicked away that tickling touch. “I need to be busy. You know that.” 

“I do. It’s just that you’re getting snappier. I know the press is … complicated, for you.” 

Wolfe snorted and spun away from his lover’s infuriatingly piercing gaze, like the emerald he had obtained for Jess and Thomas the other day. “C _omplicated_ ,” he repeated mockingly. Nic knew so little, and oh, he was glad of that. 

Wolfe hadd identified, belatedly, that this place was having an adverse affect on his mind, and he had taken sensible steps to stop himself from getting bogged down in that. If anything, Nic should be pleased with him. 

He went to the wardrobe and yanked it open, staring at the row of costumes. Dress-up outfits. Everything fake and false. “It’s fine, Nic,” he said, staring at a lovely royal blue waistcoat. “It went well, today. The press.”

He reached out to touch the soft material, and saw that his hands were still filthy with grease and oil.

Unbidden the memory rose in him again. Flicking the switches. Thomas’ approval. Printed results, tangible and crinkling in his hands as though they weren’t the most dangerous thing he could imagine. 

A different sort of dirt on his hands, embedded. 

“It works,” he said. Or thought he said. Could Nic hear?

Should Nic hear?

A whisper brushed against the edge of his mind. Soft. Shadowy.

_Tell me, Scholar Wolfe…_

He blinked and jerked backwards in fright at his own reflection. 

Reflection? 

Mirror? 

He was somewhere else, all of a sudden.

Where? How?

He very desperately did not want to look at himself in the mirror, so instead he looked at his hands. They were in a basin. Water was pouring over the oil and grease on his skin ineffectually. 

The water from the faucet was icy cold on his hands. He clung to that sensory input as the walls closed in on him and his heart raced and his breath choked him.

“Nic?” Stupid. Like a child, calling for its mother in the midst of a nightmare. 

_Or like a man screaming for his lover in the midst of agony, for fear he is suffering worse ..._

“Yes?” The door swung open immediately. Nic was there. Relief swirled over Wolfe and he felt faint with it. 

He didn’t know what else to say, but in the end he didn’t need to say anything; Nic’s arms closed around him. 

“Did you go blank, my love?”

“I blinked.” That wasn’t an explanation.

He couldn’t stop shivering.

“I thought you might have.” Nic’s voice was steady and calm. “You didn’t respond when I spoke to you.”

His heart beat quickly against Wolfe's lowered face, but even that sign of his true emotions was comforting. One needed a heartbeat to be alive.

“You just walked from the wardrobe to here, that’s all, Chris. Do you know where you are?”

A bathroom, and a wardrobe - their bedroom - Castle Raby - Callum Brightwell. A trap by any other name, yes, but at least he could identify it.

Wolfe nodded. Nic frowned down at him, looking unconvinced. 

“Raby.” His voice sounded croaky but sane. 

“Exactly. You’ve only been in this bathroom a minute or so. You’re safe.” 

“Right. Shit. Fuck.” Wolfe stared at the porcelain sink. Ineloquent words, but the best that his whirling mind could spit out. He hadn’t blanked out like that in at least a year. 

Well, except for the fact that he didn’t remember a lot of their time spent rescuing Thomas from under Rome - 

or their first night in Philadelphia - 

or a lot of the wait by Nic’s sickbed -

but that was surely to be expected. He didn’t _want_ to remember any of that. 

“Here.” Nic turned off the gushing, freezing water. 

Wolfe flexed his hands. He wanted to reach for the tap himself but his hands felt clumsy, as if he were wearing gloves, or being operated by strings. 

“They’re still dirty.”

Nic slid one warm hand down from Wolfe’s shoulder to his elbow. Not restricting, just … making itself known. “You can clean them later. Come and sit down.”

“Nic. I’m fine. Let me wash my hands.” He knew why Nic was doing this. Wolfe had had a tendency, during his initial recovery, to get obsessive about cleanliness. “I’m not going to clean my fucking skin off.”

Nic sighed. He turned the water back on. The temperature was tepid and inoffensive and it only made Wolfe grit his teeth harder, preparing for the fight.

He was surprised by Nic pressing a chaste kiss to his cheek and saying, “I’ll wait outside.”

Wasn’t Nic going to stay and watch?

Did he want him to?

Last time anything like this had happened, Nic hadn't left Wolfe alone anywhere for days. It had been teeth-grindingly frustrating. 

He could barely even get his mind to accept that his hands belonged to him right now, let alone figure out his reaction to that, so instead of worring he focused on the simple task of cleaning his hands. 

"Soap works because it is both hydrophilic and hydrophobic," he recited to himself, silently but moving his lips, "so it binds with the water as well as the oil, thus allowing the oil to be removed through the friction of rubbing." 

The soapy water ran grey from his hands. Once, twice, then clear.

Good. 

When he opened the bathroom door, wiping his hands dry on his trousers, he saw Nic sitting on the bed. Their eyes met, and the concern in Nic’s gaze felt like a weight landing on his chest. He turned away from it, and found himself gravitating to the open window. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Nic’s voice was heavy with the expected denial, and well, Wolfe wasn’t one to disappoint. 

“No,” he snapped.

The cold breeze on his face made him shiver, but it helped him think too. He immediately regretted his tone. “I finished the press.” He made himself say it. Out loud. To Nic. “We’ll pretend I haven’t, for now. Let Thomas finish his weapon.”

“And how long will that be?”

“I’m not sure.” That was a lie. He shook his head and held onto the windowsill so hard that his hands throbbed. “I can’t say.” His voice cracked. 

“That’s absolutely fine. You don’t need to say anything you don’t want to.” 

Nic’s voice was so patient. He was owed _some_ sort of explanation, if only to stop him from inventing something worse.

Normally he tried not to talk about his imprisonment. It was better for Nic, who got upset about even the most sanitised memories Wolfe had. It was inconvenient, too; talking about it tended to trigger nightmares. 

Wolfe breathed in more cold, damp English air. Had Leeds been this cold, when he had visited its brand-new Serapeum all those years ago? He didn’t think so. They were further north, he thought. He couldn’t recall the exact geography of England, right now.

They were going to reveal the printing press to the _king of the book-smugglers_ , for the love of all the gods; the fact that telling his beloved Nic made the room shrink around him was _ridiculous._

He steeled himself.

“I spent a long time swearing you knew nothing,” he said. His voice didn’t sound like his own. He couldn’t feel any part of his body, except from, very faintly, the pain in his hands where he clutched the windowsill. “Knowing that they could never get any of the secrets they wanted from you, no matter how hard they might try.”

Nic’s footsteps sounded behind him. He couldn’t turn around.

(Just in case they weren’t real.)

(Just in case they weren’t Nic’s.)

“So, that’s why it’s dif…” His tongue got stuck on the word ‘difficult’ and all of the effort he had left went into that, stammering fragments of that word out over and over while his body folded into Nic’s embrace. 

“Ssh,” Nic murmured, holding him securely. “Thank you for telling me. I understand a bit more now. Hush. It’s all right.” 

Wolfe let himself relax for a few moments. Let Nic’s body inform the shape of his own in his unstable mental map. Nic’s hands, splayed across his back, shifting up and down his spine. Nic’s shoulder, tense underneath his cheek. Nic’s perspiration-slick skin, tickling his nose and lips when he breathed. 

Breathing. Yes. Good. 

Once he felt vaguely functional again, he stood back. “Sorry. Thank you.” He tucked his hair behind his ears, then reached out to aimlessly stroke Nic’s chest. 

The open window drew him again, like a moth to a flame, and he leaned on the windowsill to stare aimlessly outside. It was dark and peaceful out there. 

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Nic asked a few moments later, resting a hand on the small of Wolfe’s back. “Not yet,” he clarified when Wolfe stayed silent. “In a little while.” _When you’re feeling better_ , came the unspoken follow-up. 

Did he want to go for a walk? It would certainly help to clear his head, if one open window was so useful in that regard already. They hadn’t explored the grounds, much. Or, he hadn’t anyway. He had no idea what Nic had spent his time doing.

Probably Nic already had a route planned.

Probably Nic already had a full mental map of the entire premises formed from nothing but innocuous strolls. That would be very, very Nic. 

But on the other hand, something small and pathetic inside him curled up and quailed at the thought of leaving this room, with its sturdy lock on the door and its singular entrance, to walk vulnerable in the grounds with his mind full of printing secrets. 

He cursed himself. When he first arrived, he’d rightly identified this room as a prison within a prison. 

Oh, he hated it when his mind couldn’t even choose which foolishness to wallow in. 

“I don’t know,” he answered. Nic made a low sound of acknowledgement and started rubbing tiny circles on the small of Wolfe’s back. That gave Wolfe the strength to continue; “On balance, I think maybe I should stay here.”

“Of course.” Nic pressed another one of those little chaste kisses to Wolfe’s temple, then the weight of his hand disappeared. 

Wolfe tried to ignore the utterly irrational wave of fear that Nic had disappeared by staring out of the window, focusing on a weedy-looking imported Japanese larch tree. 

He spun at the ominous sound of something dragging across the floor, then relaxed. Nic was dragging one of the two armchairs in the room across the thick rug which covered most of the wooden floor. 

“Mind your back,” he said, automatically. Nic ignored that dig, as per usual, and dragged the chair right up to where Wolfe stood. 

“There.” He patted it. “Now you can sit _and_ look out of the window.”

“You’re fussing,” Wolfe snapped, as he blinked tears of gratitude away.

“Maybe a little.” Nic also handed him the Blank that he’d been reading the previous night. “If I were fussing a lot, my love, I’d get you a plate of food and insist you ate something.”

Wolfe sighed as if Nic was talking nonsense and opened the Blank to a random page. The text was _L'Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal_ , a fascinating Anglo-Norman text. If he had to read something English, it might as well be in French. 

Well. A _type_ of French. It had proven a mild intellectual stimulant the night before - he hadn’t kept up his obscure French dialects.

“Chris!” 

Nic’s frustration was noted. But Wolfe needed to find the page he’d last been on. Permanent Blanks didn’t remember where you’d closed it like regular Blanks - they were designed to feel as close to the ‘original’ reading experience as possible. Callum Brightwell had bookshelves rammed full of ostentatious permanent Blanks, but no pot of bookmarks. What did he expect them to do, leave the cursed things lying around spine up? Fold down pages??

“You barely ate a bite of dinner,” Nic continued, audible despite Wolfe’s determined inner monologue. “You missed lunch. When I woke at dawn you were already in the workshop. Did you eat any breakfast?”

Wolfe tried to comb back through the day. Time was merely a jumble of press progress. 

When the sun came up, he’d been in the middle of replacing the mould for the metal type because several letters were more than a millimetre different in size. 

Thomas had been fussing over refraction angles on his jewels. 

Food?

“I had coffee,” he said, even though he didn’t remember whether he had or not. Still, it seemed a safe bet. “With sugar in it.”

Nic sighed and made a frustrated gesture with both arms. He swung around and marched away. 

Wolfe let him go, after a surreptitious glance to make sure he was still in the room and hadn’t disappeared off to try to find something to force-feed him with. 

His eyes skimmed the words in front of him, only picking out one or two in a sentence. His mind was snared in a low-level buzzing net and he couldn’t get himself free. 

It was a nasty little contradictory situation, because not being able to process a text always made him twitchy. He’d been that way ever since the only possible reason for it was one too many late nights as a postulant. His intelligence and his scholarship had been his tools to dig himself out of the Alexandrian street-pit his mother had cast him into, and knowing they were wobbly made him feel wobbly too.

It was why his erasure from the Archives had cut so deep. What was he, without words?

But, no. That was a thought for another time. An entirely hypothetical future time in which he might trust the safety of his physical life enough to address the mental life again. 

After what felt like an eternity of restarting the same page over and over again, unsuccessfully trying to hammer the information in through repetition, he sighed and let his head fall back against the hard, over-stuffed armchair. 

“All right,” he said to the ceiling, without raising his voice. “Working on the press was a … convoluted way to keep myself busy.”

“I’d-”

Wolfe jumped, heart racing; Nic was right behind him, judging by his voice. Unexpected. 

Nic cupped his face upside-down with both hands, and Wolfe permitted himself a weak moment of softening in Nic’s grasp. His eyes drifted closed, and he forced them open again irritably. 

“I would have used ‘counterproductive’, myself," Nic continued, in a lower voice, "but I defer to your greater knowledge as usual.”

Wolfe scoffed. “You? Defer?” 

Nic chuckled and let go of his face and moved away. Wolfe fought the immediate urge to look for him.

Another muted dragging sound, then, as Nic brought the other armchair over. He smiled at Wolfe and sat down as if it was nothing, just another evening. The two of them away on a dangerous mission, reading together in a quiet moment. 

Reading flowed more easily after that, with Nic so close that their legs entangled and their Blanks occasionally touched as they turned the pages. 

It was comforting beyond words to feel Nic's body heat, hear his breathing, see his forehead wrinkle in concentration as he read. Eventually the Blank fell lax in Wolfe's fingers, drooping onto his lap, and he simply sat and drank the view in like the finest of wines.

He'd come so close to losing him in Philadelphia. In that terrible, tiny room.

Those thoughts echoed back at him from earlier, before he'd blinked himself into the bathroom, when he'd anxiously checked Nic's rapidly-healing arm. 

Reminding himself that Nic was safe and alive should be a reasonable mental tic, except that in order to remind himself that Nic was alive, he needed to remember why that might not have been true.

He pushed his head back against the high armchair and rubbed a hand across his chin, feeling the emerging prickles of almost 24 hours without shaving. The sensation helped put him back inside his own skin. He felt a little disconnected, again. 

"Tired, my love?" Nic said with a familiar hopeful tone. Had it got late without Wolfe noticing again? That did tend to happen once he picked up a book.

"No," he said, before he'd even figured out whether it was true or not.

Nic leaned forwards and rubbed Wolfe's thigh. His touch was warm and grounding and reassuring enough to bring tears to Wolfe's eyes. 

_More_ , demanded something deep within him.

"Come here," he said hoarsely. Even as he said it, he was making a liar of himself, flailing and scrabbling with limbs that felt only half-attached to try and reach Nic. 

Nic's thickly muscled arms lifted into onto Nic's lap, just where he wanted to be - and Wolfe wondered idly just how much bodyweight he'd lost in Philadelphia for Nic to do that so easily. Out of one prison, out of another; certain aesthetics remained the same, he supposed. 

"How did you bear it, for a year?" The words burst out of him like pent-up sewage. Nic frowned and shook his head very slightly. "I only thought I might lose you for a couple of _nights_ , Nic, how did you-"

Nic put his hand over Wolfe's mouth. It was ever so gentle. Ever so easy to remove. It helped Wolfe stop his voice from completely running away from him. 

"Badly, my love. I bore it badly. Though unlike you I did keep eating." Nic tucked Wolfe's hair behind his ear and Wolfe kissed Nic's forehead, trying to drive away the wrinkles of remembered agony. "Chronic differs from acute, anyway. You know that."

Wolfe raised his eyebrows at that - Nic hadn't trotted out that line since an early-thirties fight between Wolfe's chronic bad wrist and Nic's broken leg as to who got the comfortable chair and desk to work at and who relied on the main table. 

_These days I am chronic and acute all rolled into one unpleasant package_ , he thought, and felt anxiety tighten his throat and chest. Enough, Chris. Stop that. Stop dwelling like that.

He settled himself more comfortably in Nic's lap and leaned in to kiss him. Nic eagerly returned the kiss, and stroked Wolfe's back in long, heavy motions that felt somehow greedy, made Wolfe feel desirable again despite the state of his mind. 

His own hands were roaming restlessly across Nic's body, flitting from Nic's thickly stubbled cheek to his neck to shoulders to arms - yes everything's fine with Nic's arm - to hips and back again while his tongue thrust and the urgent pressure from his mouth pushed Nic's head back against the back of the armchair. That looked uncomfortable, since Nic's chair wasn't as high-backed and Nic's torso was longer anyway, but Nic showed no sign of complaint as Wolfe dug the wooden rim into the back of Nic's head with his clingy, stupid desperation. 

Wolfe finally had to move his lips away from Nic's in order to watch his fingers; his hands were trembling too much to manage Nic's fiddly, unnecessary shirt buttons without looking. 

He'd only opened two buttons, baring a lovely triangle of chest hair, when Nic loosely, gently took hold of one of his wrists. Not too tight. Not 'encircled'. None of those things, Wolfe's ever-racing mind noted. 

"It's a bit cold, _amore mio_."

Wolfe barely paid attention. Nic looked a very pretty picture like this, head tilted back, a tease of his chest as it rose and fell, the faint, cloud-sieved moonlight glimmering on his face. Speaking Italian, too. Wolfe adored Nic speaking to him in Italian.

"It's fine," he muttered, relinquishing the idea of stripping Nic in favour of diving back to his mouth. 

Then Nic's hands found their way underneath his shirt and he had to draw a long, shivering breath. 

"Warm hands," he said with a sigh. 

Warm was an understatement. His skin prickled all over from the contrast. He tried, foolishly, unproductively, to somehow shove himself even closer to Nic as if that would make it even better.

"Told you. Too much lingering at cold English windows for you." Nic brushed a kiss against Wolfe's cheek and started moving his absurdly warm hands in the same wonderful wide motions as before.

Wolfe buried his face in Nic's neck and found a good patch of delicate skin there to fit into his hungry mouth, to suck and lick and taste. 

"High collar for me tomorrow," Nic said in a disapproving tone, even as he shifted slightly in a way that revealed the presence of his erection. 

Wolfe bit Nic's neck, to give him something to really complain about, and won another little shift, a grunt. 

Then Nic took his turn, and dragged his fingernails down the sensitised skin of Wolfe's bare back. 

Wolfe made a noise. It was not a noise he would have ever had admitted to making. 

The bastard. The. _Fuck_. 

"Again?" Nic murmured in his ear, and didn't wait for a response. 

The pressure and the heat and the mild but sharp pain pierced his remaining tension like a knife, and he leaned bonelessly against Nic and tried to remember how to breathe. 

" _Come stai, dolcezza_?" 

For a moment, Wolfe's mind was so blank that he couldn't translate, but once he'd breathed in and out a few times the meaning filtered back; _Are you all right, sweetheart?_

"Mm." He mouthed at Nic's neck for a few more blissful moments, then reluctantly peeled himself away. "Fine. You might have been right about the wind-chill."

"Bed, then?"

Wolfe nodded. Nic's face lit up so beautifully that Wolfe had to kiss it again. And again. 

Eventually he clambered to his feet, making sure to grind against Nic's erection as much as he could in the process. His own was only fitfully enthusiastic. Never mind. 

He was a little shaky still, from leftover anxiety, but nothing that couldn't be solved by locking his elbows and leaning on the arm of the chair. He snorted as Nic, who had been sprawled in the chair most appealingly, did his own undignified scramble to his feet. 

"Don't worry, I won't go straight to sleep and leave you alone." He squeezed the bulge in Nic's trousers, then Nic wrapped his arms tightly around him.

"I'm more worried about you falling over!" Nic kissed Wolfe's temple.

Wolfe made a muffled noise of complaint from where his lips were squashed against Nic's collarbone. He was _fine_. Yes, his knees were wobbly, but if Nic would just let them fold, he would be in the perfect position to take something much more satisfying than Nic's neck into his mouth.

"Bed," he said and rocked his weight into Nic to try and get him to move. That had the genuinely unintended result of Nic groaning, distinctly higher-pitched than before. 

Yes. He would bring Nic to completion tonight, and then, in the morning?

Well. The press was made (he'd made a press).

Whether or not it had been a mistake to be involved, it was done (he had done it).

They had thrown that set of dice into the air and couldn't influence the landing any more. 

So perhaps tomorrow, he might take advantage of this luxurious cell. Lie in. Eat breakfast. Map every inc of Nic until neither of them could bear the ecstasy of the edge for any longer. 

More likely he would scare himself awake seven times in one night and accidentally punch Nic in the face, given his state of mind.

But, still. It was a lovely plan to entertain as he and Nic tumbled into bed. 


End file.
